Balls of steel and a heart of gold best describes Rohit Shetty – The Auteur

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It’s quite often that film directors get an auteur status because of one or a couple of unique elements that his/her fans always watch out for in their movies. Be it the violence driven movies of Quentin Tarantino or the films revolving around social misfits by Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan’s love for analysing the realm of the unknown.

India has many auteurs of its own, but there is one contemporary director who has carved a niche for himself by finding a fine balance between action and comedy in his films. The director in question is none other than Rohit ‘Hit Machine’ Shetty.

The daredevil director started out in the film business over a decade ago with his first film ‘Zameen’ starring (his dear friend) Ajay Devgn and Abhishek Bachchan in lead roles. Although the film didn’t do well at the box-office, Rohit was confident that filmmaking is something that he is born to do. His next feature, ‘Golmaal’ till date stands as probably his best directorial venture, simply based on the way it managed to strike the chord with the audience. But, Rohit has always been criticised for using over the top action sequences to grab eyeballs for his films, specially by blowing up cars and even making them fly.

The latest project that he’s working on is the Shahrukh Khan, Kajol, Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon starrer ‘Dilwale’. Red Chillies Entertainment recently released a video on its YouTube channel called ‘Heart behind Action’, which shows the auteur speaking from the heart about how it pains him to hear people say that all you can expect from a Rohit Shetty film is cars being blown up and doing things which defy gravity.

He starts off by speaking about how he always wishes to push the envelope when it comes to the action sequences in all his movies; but ‘Dilwale’ is going to further push that envelope to a whole new level.

There is a special team of stuntmen and stunt drives from Bulgaria and South Africa working with Rohit’s crew this time around on ‘Dilwale’. “I want my action sequences to look very grand on screen and I have successfully managed to do that till now, but what people don’t see is the fact that there are nearly 200 men who are putting their lives on the line for my dream to be achieved, and that is what I wish to show,” Rohit reveals in the video.

The idea for creating this video was to show everyone out there what actually goes into making those mindblowing action scenes. The kind of preparation time and number of people, who put their sweat and sometimes real blood in making those visually stunning sequences come to life on celluloid.

“Its not about the praises, its merely the matter of respect. There are men from three countries involved in this project, who have put their hearts into the work they have done. They have faith in me and I have faith in the Almighty and I leave it upon Him always when we are doing any stunt sequence,” Rohit ends.

This is also one man who has never shied away from using visual effects to give a grandeur look to his films. Many visual effects supervisors have lauded his visionary thoughts in utilising some stunning effects to accompany the practical effects, which is generally the way Rohit prefers to work with.

‘Dilwale’ is set for a 18 December release across the world and will face some stiff competition from Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s period historic drama ‘Bajirao Mastani’ boasting a stellar cast of Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra. Another point worth noting is the fact that NY VFXWALA is the common string attached to both the projects as one of the VFX studios working on them, only time will tell if the world of Hindi cinema will witness another story of a ‘Lagaan’ and ‘Gadar’, or will one of these biggies come crashing to the ground.